"A most unlikely collection of suspects - law schools, their deans, U.S. News& World Report and its employees - may have committed felonies by publishingfalse information as part of U.S. News' ranking of law schools. The possiblefederal felonies include mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, andmaking false statements. Employees of law schools and U.S. News whocommitted these crimes can be punished as individuals, and under federal lawthe schools and U.S. News would likely be criminally liable for their agents'crimes. Some law schools and their deans submitted false information about theschools' expenditures and their students' undergraduate grades and LSATscores. Others submitted information that may have been literally true but wasmisleading. Examples include misleading statistics about recent graduates'employment rates and students' undergraduate grades and LSAT scores. U.S.News itself may have committed mail and wire fraud. It has republished, andsold for profit, data submitted by law schools without verifying the data'saccuracy, despite being aware that at least some schools were submitting falseand misleading data. U.S. News refused to correct incorrect data and rankingserrors and continued to sell that information even after individual schoolsconfessed that they had submitted false information. In addition, U.S. Newsmarketed its surveys and rankings as valid although they were riddled withfundamental methodological errors."